With the increasing expense and weight of portable powered hand tools and the weight in general of many hand tools such as hammers, there came recognition of the penalty associated with dropping such a tool. Powered hand tools often times are damaged when they are dropped, and falling hand and power hand tools can injure persons or property if dropped from an elevated position.
As a result of these circumstances, attachment devices have been devised to secure hand tools from such a drop. Many tools are manufactured with captive holes, to allow the connection of a safety line. Further, lanyards and D-rings have been built into many hand power tools to allow attachment of lines to the tool at one end, and a user's body at the other. For example see U.S. Pat. No. 6,487,756 to Vidal.
Many power and non-power hand tools, however, have no such means of attachment. As a result various methods have been devised to add such an attachment means to a tool that was not originally so configured.
One method is to tape a safety strap to the handle of such a tool. Python Safety, Inc. makes such a tape called Quickwrap Tape™ for this purpose. Another method is used by Tool Safety Solutions LTD, and involves using a heat sensitive tape to secure a section of strap to the tool, and then apply heat to the tape allowing it to shrink and hold the section of strap in place.
Other methods include using cold shrink rubber sleeves mounted on a removable core to allow the natural constriction of the rubber to create an anchor point as disclosed in application Ser. No. 14/020,929 to Votel, et al. This concept was further expanded in U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,567,290 and 8,567,291 to Moreau to a multi-piece slide-on stopper concept to hold the anchor in place.
A disadvantage of the above tape method is that tape can lose its adhesive properties over time and under harsh environmental conditions, creating uncertainty when the tool safety strap connection might fail.
The heat shrink method has disadvantages as well. The heating step might either damage the handle or section of safety strap being used. If the heat shrink adhesive is over heated, the safety strap might well be weakened by the heating process and the weakened safety strap within the heat shrink adhesive might go undetected. An unexpected failure of the safety strap might then occur. Further, the heating step can release undesirable toxic combustion products. In addition, heat shrink sleeves require use of a thin walled product, required for process safety and optimum rate of heat conduction through the heat shrink material. Such a thin-walled product may not be durable or safe in securing a strap to a heavy hand tool, or supporting the weight of the tool if the tool is dropped.
The cold shrink with removable core method involves multiple pieces and cannot be easily adjusted once in place, and are difficult to deploy in the field. Further, it is a one use product. The slide-on invention by Moreau has multiple pieces and is designed such that the bore that captures the hand tool needs to be smaller than the diameter of the area of the hand tool to which it to be applied. This makes application difficult, and the multiple pieces make installation in the field inconvenient and sometimes impossible. Further, the small circular bore size of the Moreau invention restricts the flexibility of the invention for use in tools with non-circular shapes and varying diameters.
Therefore, there is an unfulfilled need for a better and simpler way of creating an anchor point on a hand tool for attaching a safety strap that can be more easily deployed in the field.